The first session at Overby-Sheppard Elementary School went very well! My group of leaders for these four sessions consists of Itzel, Diana, Hannah, and myself. For this particular session, however, the leaders of our group included Itzel, Diana, myself, and Rosie (because of the 10:14 ratio of children to adults, Rosie joined our group to even out the leaders!) Hannah was unable to attend this session due to a minor medical issue that we didn’t want to expose to the children.

The four of us started out by introducing ourselves to the four kindergarteners (three girls and one boy) by means of a fun icebreaker. We had them say their names and adjectives that started with the same letters as their first names. Some of the “adjectives” that emerged include “jelly”, “apple”, and “snake”. Once we all introduced ourselves, we moved into another room in order to prevent as much distraction from the older children as possible. Once we moved rooms and settled in, we asked the children if they have ever heard any fairy tales or knew of any specific fairy tales. The general consensus was that they couldn’t think of any specific ones at the moment (they just kept describing fairies and magic in general). Next, we started to read Grimms’ story entitled “Little Red Cap” to the kids, each reading a paragraph. After the introduction of the wolf’s character, they all raised their hands and told us that they recognized the story as Little Red Riding Hood. We tried to make it more enjoyable and attention-grabbing for the children by changing voices for the characters and making knocking sounds on the table when a character would knock on the door of the grandmother’s house. After we finished the story, the kids wanted to get up and do something, so we had them act out the fairy tale.

They each took on their characters and were well-behaved and respectful of each other – they were quite good at acting out the plot! Knowing this, we will most-likely incorporate acting out the tales after reading to them in future sessions. For the next session, we plan on bringing picture books of fairy tales as well as coloring utensils/paper. We will read a different story to them (whichever is available in the library – Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc.), have them act out the tale, and then ask them to draw their favorite scene. This will show us how receptive the children are to crafts as well as what they deem important in the tales we read to them. We look forward to working with them again next Tuesday!